I have been carrying around "A Cup of Hemlock" for 25 years. I read it while at high school and something about it resonated strongly. When I started to become interested in film making 18 years later, it was definitely something that I wanted to make at some point... but science fiction is not something that I wanted to do first up. In 2005 (after 4 shorts), I felt I was finally ready to do the story justice, the only problem being; I had forgotten the title and author as well as the title and editor of the anthology (although I was sure it was classic sci-fi - Asimov or Bradbury or Heinlein).
I started local; bookshops, libraries, friends with Sci-fi collections but without any success. It didn't help that Asimov wrote a short story called "Death Sentence" which led me down the wrong path. In the end (after 3 years), I finally tracked it down by asking on a Bradbury book forum. It then took a further 6 months to find a physical copy (via the Book Nook in Illinois via ABEBooks online). And then it sat on my desk for 6 months.
During a particularly fulfilling period at work, I finally decided that I would start developing the project and the first step was to contact the author, sci-fi novellist Lee Killough. She was on Facebook (of course) and we became 'friends' and after a short period of negotiation, settled on a very fair price for the rights.
So now I have until June 2014 to finish the project and pre-production is underway.
Ted Janet is developing the screenplay (and producing) and we have commenced auditions for the cast. Dominic Thomas (www.domthomas.com) will be doing the cinematography.
All going well, we plan to raise funds to be able to shoot during the Easter weekend April 2 - 5 2010.
Very exciting stuff indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment